Haute Time, Summer in the City

And so, here we are, wending our way toward summer’s bittersweet end—a time when families have picnics and clambakes on seaside beaches, and Goldman Sachs traders admire their $50,000 chronographs and flick through the new Audi and BMW brochures. In Washington, D.C., the Christian morality crowd that holed up at the so-called Prayer House—a brick row house on C Street, a few blocks from the Capitol—are in repentance mode for having had just too good a time while they were showing the rest of us the righteous way. That C Street residence, as the world now knows, is the home away from home of Governor Mark Sanford, Senator John Ensign, and former representative Chip Pickering, all of whom were found to be straying as much as they were praying. I don’t know what they’re putting in the water over there on C Street, but that “family values” bunch seemed to be getting more action than Wilt Chamberlain in his heyday. Sanford, Ensign, Pickering, and other like-minded members of the Republican prayer brigade may come on like uptight Omega-fraternity elders Doug Neidermeyer and Greg Marmalard in Animal House, but when the sun goes down, they’re putting the tango records on the hi-fi, adjusting their cravats, and mimicking the moves of Otter, the Delta House leader and lethal stickman.

Here at Vanity Fair, we’ve been compiling our annual best-dressed list and checking it twice. Seven years ago, Eleanor Lambert bequeathed the International Best-Dressed Poll, which she created in 1940, to Reinaldo Herrera, Aimée Bell, Amy Fine Collins (all esteemed editors at this magazine), and myself. The list is an enduring record of the best-heeled, best-tailored, best-style-conversant people in the world. The 70th annual offerings include recurring favorites, such as Fiat heir Lapo Elkann, Brad Pitt, and a lovely pair of First Ladies, and newcomers like environmental entrepreneur Roo Rogers and artist Cy Twombly, as well as eminent actors and elusive royals.

Collins’s fashion ken is also evident in her magnificently constructed history of haute couture. What began 235 years ago as a tailor’s skill—when a Parisian seamstress concocted Marie Antoinette’s elaborate wardrobe, at the bargain price of the queen’s head—is now a global enterprise propelling hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually, with individual gowns sometimes costing upwards of $150,000 and taking hundreds of hours to produce. Collins, an art historian and lifelong student of the beaux arts (who has written for Vanity Fair for the past 20 years), recounts the rise of the grand couturiers, like Hubert de Givenchy and Paul Poiret, and the legends that many others have since become, Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent, and Christian Dior among them.

Almost as notorious as the labels are the ladies who have worn them: members of ranking nobility and high society, and the designers’ beau monde clients, such as Jacqueline de Ribes, Nan Kempner, Lynn Wyatt, and Sheikha Mozah of Qatar. This year, when the recession clanged its death gong for Christian Lacroix—hallowed among the younger couturiers—it seemed another iteration of the alarmist notion that haute couture was on the verge of extinction. But as new talents like Alexandre Matthieu and Stéphane Rolland begin to show their designs; as many of the greats (Karl Lagerfeld, John Galliano) remain in their prime; and as enough of our own Best-Dressed are still willing to fasten an eyehook or 20, the imminent funeral of fashion’s highest art seems unlikely.

The trial of Brooke Astor’s only son, Tony Marshall, and his lawyer Francis Morrissey has dominated New York’s headlines and dinner-party conversations since court convened in April. In our article, Meryl Gordon, the leading expert on the trial and the author of last year’s definitive book on the case, Mrs. Astor Regrets, writes: “In this summer of New York’s discontent, a rainy, recessionary season in which even the city’s wealthy felt nouveau pauvre, &hellip; here was a story about money that everyone could understand, that did not involve credit-default swaps or derivatives: a son accused of stealing from his mother.”

Gordon chronicles the unfortunate details of this multi-generational family saga from a singular perch in the courthouse. She finds herself in the uniquely privileged position of having the ear and the attention of the lawyers, witnesses, defendants, plaintiffs from an earlier guardianship case, and even a dismissed juror. From private conversations, late-night phone calls, and home visits with these various parties, Gordon pieces together a definitive and exhaustive account of this Oedipal conflict, and collects exclusive insights and information that have yet to be reported elsewhere. Even Charlene Marshall, Tony’s vilified wife, occasionally turned to Gordon for a shoulder to cry on. When asked if she and Tony ever tried to settle out of court, Charlene defiantly insisted to Gordon, “Tony did not do one thing wrong.” Annette de la Renta, a co-plaintiff along with Astor grandson Philip Marshall and financier David Rockefeller, also used Gordon as an outlet to refute a defense lawyer’s accusation. After being questioned on the stand about the ethics of accepting expensive jewelry from a confused Mrs. Astor in 2001, de la Renta confided to Gordon that she thought the necklace and earrings were “hideous,” and planned to give them to Philip’s teenage daughter, Sophie, as a legacy of her great-grandmother.

A dismissed juror told Gordon that the jury often discussed who would play whom in the inevitable movie of the trial: Kathy Bates as Charlene, Richard Dreyfuss as Tony’s defense lawyer Fred Hafetz, Laura Linney as prosecutor Liz Loewy, etc. (I was a witness, too. We’ll be talking to George Clooney’s people about that part.) Gordon recognizes, in the end, that she is “something of an anomaly in the courtroom—a one-person welcoming committee for witnesses, an occasional fact-checker for the press, and an observer of quirky details.” As such, she writes a gripping account of this sprawling and quintessentially New York tale.

Graydon Carter is the editor of Vanity Fair. His books include What We’ve Lost (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) and Oscar Night: 75 Years of Hollywood Parties (Knopf).